Christie frequently used quotations from nursery rhymes as titles for her novels and short stories. Sometimes the reference is a clue to the solution but, infuriatingly for those who treat her novels as puzzles to be solved, at least as often it is a red herring.

The most frequently quoted rhyme is “Sing a Song of Sixpence”, whose words give the titles to the Miss Marple novel A Pocketful of Rye (from the Folio Society edition of which, the Andrew Davidson illustration above is taken) and to two short stories Sing a Song of Sixpence and Four and Twenty Blackbirds.

In the novel, Inspector Neele seeks obsessively for the reason why the murder victim should have “a pocketful of rye” in his jacket when he is killed. It would give too much away if I were to disclose the reason here and its connection, if any, with his death.

In the first of the two short stories, there is indeed a sixpence, possibly forged, which has come into the possession of the woman who is murdered. It’s place in the solution suddenly occurs to the investigating lawyer by chance when he sees the name of a restaurant called “Four and Twenty Blackbirds” – the association with the rhyme triggering a line of thought which leads to the unmasking of the culprit.

The second of the short stories turns on the effects of eating blackberry pie, which reveals a surprising sequence of events by which a murder was contrived. Needless to say, Poirot, sees through the concealed plot and springs the surprise conclusion.

Of course, it is Christie’s intention to spring such surprises and it is no surprise, therefore, that she should use this nursery rhyme more than any other as a source for her titles. The rhyme relates the 16th century practice of concealing live birds in a baked pie served up between courses in a banquet. When the pie is cut open, the birds emerge and fly off (or begin to sing, as the rhyme has it), making an entertaining surprise for the guests. Surely this is only appropriate for Christie as the Queen of springing such surprising denouements on her readers.

The nursery rhyme “Three Blind Mice” also appears in three Christie works.  It serves as the title for a short story and a radio play. It is also used as a musical motif in the long-running production of her play The Mousetrap. However, I would argue that since all three are inter-related – the short story is based on the half hour radio play and the long play is an expansion of the ideas first contained in the shorter original, albeit with crucial differences – this constitutes a single actual use with three different takes rather than three separate and unrelated stories.

Other rhymes which have been used by Christie are many and varied in how she has applied them.

“Goosey Goosey Gander” is used in the Tommy and Tuppence adventure N or M?.

“Hickory Dickory Dock” gives its name to a Poirot novel although the link is thin – the name of a road in the book, indeed, the US title of the book is Hickory Dickory Death, which makes the link even more obscure.

“Mary, Mary Quite Contrary” is used in the short story How Does Your Garden Grow?, the rhyme being quoted by Poirot as he explains how he arrived at the solution.

“One, Two Buckle My Shoe” gives its name to the title of a Poirot novel, though again the US title differs. It was first known as The Patriotic Murders and subsequently re-titled An Overdose of Death. Perhaps the rhyme is less well known in the US than the UK, or perhaps the publishers thought the references were too obscure for the American market. However, the chapter titles in this book are derived from the lines of the rhyme, so it does provide valuable signposting to the reader who is alive to the possible connotations of the rhyme, to help solve the mystery.

“There Was A Crooked Man” serves as an inspiration for one of Christie’s favourite of her novels, The Crooked House, for which she allowed the idea a period of several years gestation before she finally wrote it. The rhyme has everything crooked and this is applied to the psychological states of the family members living at the house who have all grown up “twisted and twining” as a result of an unnatural dependence on the family patriarch.

“This Little Piggy” provides plot ideas for the novel Five Little Pigs. The five suspects are each noted by Poirot to have characteristics that might be (loosely) associated with those of the five pigs listed in the nursery rhyme. Again the US publishers eschewed this conceit and retitled the book Murder in Retrospect.

But of course the most famous (infamous?) use of a nursery rhyme by Christie was her riff on “Ten Little Indians” or, in its more politically incorrect original form “Ten Little Niggers”, now more suitably titled And Then There Were None, taking the final line of the rhyme. Here the rhyme serves as a blueprint for the deaths which befall each of the characters in the startling plot. It is a masterly use of this device which both ratchets up the tension and provides the mis-direction to take readers’ eyes off the ball at the crucial moments so that they are shocked by the final revelation of who is behind the deaths. It is little wonder that this book was recently voted her most popular with readers – it has sold more than 100 million copies, making it the seventh ranked in the all time best-sellers by any author and contributing significantly to her position as the best selling author of all time.

Tickets are now on sale for the 2016 Bodies From The Library Conference taking place on 11 June 2016 at the British Library.

We are very pleased that we have been able to keep the cost to the same amount as for the 2015 conference for those who take advantage of our Early Bird offer. So don’t delay – book now to secure your place at the 2016 conference at this year’s price.

You can buy tickets through our website:

Bodies From The Library 1 June 2024 Tickets On Sale

Or you can buy them through the Eventbrite site:

http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/bodies-from-the-library-tickets-18713458458?aff=es2

We do hope you will be able to join us.

We are very pleased to announce the date of our second annual conference at the British Library.

The conference will be taking place on 11 June 2016 and, once again, we intend it to be an all day event.

We are putting together what we hope will be a fantastic collection of speakers and interesting topics focussing on the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. Tickets will go on sale shortly at a special discounted rate for early booking.

We will update our website continually as the details are finalised.

I am reading this in a cheap Spanish paperback edition, where it goes under the title Poirot in Egypt. In order that I do not miss too much in the translation, I am checking my understanding by reading in parallel the much more elegantly presented Folio Society edition.

One thing which has quite surprised me is that just like the lovingly illustrated Folio Society edition, my cheap Spanish paperback also features original illustrations – albeit line drawings which, therefore, do not require colour printing.

Interestingly, both editions select seven scenes from the novel to feature but only one scene is illustrated in both editions. This is when the Karnak on which the party is travelling along the Nile moors at the temple of Abu Simbel. This is such an iconic view which is, with the pyramids, a sight that absolutely captures the mysterious atmosphere of the ancient ruins of Egypt in the desert.  It is therefore no surprise that both books should choose to use it.

Except they don’t quite.

The text from the novel reads: “The steamer was moored to the bank and a few hundred yards away, the morning sun just striking it, was a great temple carved out of the face of the rock.  Four colossal figures, hewn out of the cliff, look out eternally over the Nile and face the rising sun.” And this is indeed what we see in the Folio Society edition illustration below.

But in the Spanish translated version, the second sentence is omitted.  The four figures are not mentioned. And the illustration, in consequence, drawn from the Spanish text, shows a wholly conventional free standing temple with columns such as might be seen at Luxor but not at Abu Simbel. Bizarrely, the temple at Abu Simbel does feature in the cover illustration of this version (see top image).

Indeed, one might speculate that the lower production values in the cheaper Spanish paperback meant that the illustrator was simply given a few lines from the novel and told to illustrate the caption. This may account for the layout of the Karnak in the picture which, of course, does not correspond to the deck plan included in both versions of the novel in a later chapter.

There are two other pairs of images which, although not depicting the same scenes, depict the same characters at critical moments in the plot. The Folio Society edition choses to show Jacqueline de Bellefort and Simon Doyle at the moment when he is clutching his leg after she has shot at him in a drunken rage.

The Spanish edition choses to show the two of them in the aftermath when Simon Doyle is recuperating in Dr Bessner’s cabin and Jacqueline de Bellefort in a moment of high melodrama begs for forgiveness. We also see here Hercules (note the different spelling) Poirot looking on. That moustache is certainly extra-ordinary but I think we have become so used to the tightly styled, trim, waxed moustache of David Suchet and Albert Finney that it does strike as odd when confronted for the first time.

Indeed, Poirot appears a much slimmer character in the illustrations for the Spanish edition than we are used to seeing. There is no “embonpoint” for him to rejoice in, as we can see again in this illustration of the two detectives, Poirot and Colonel Race, examining the letter “J” scrawled on the wall of Linnet Doyle’s cabin in a blatant attempt to incriminate Jacquline de Bellefort. Indeed, Colonel Race is not how many English readers would imagine him in this illustration.

The Folio Society edition seems to represent Colonel Race more in line with English expectations (as indeed is Poirot) in this later scene when the two detectives find the murder weapon bearing Jacqueline’s de Bellefort’s initials.

I think it is fair to say that the illustrations in the two editions are in keeping with the expectations of their respective markets. The Folio Society hardback has beautifully reproduced colour images in muted pastel colours which ooze nostalgia and glamour in a way that will appeal to their more affluent readers; the cheap Spanish paperback – true to its pulp fiction aesthetics – focuses on the melodrama and, dare I say it, paints an altogether more black and white picture of the world.

Indeed, to avoid spoilers I have not shown here an illustration from the Spanish edition which depicts a murder with the murderer’s face showing an expression of such demonic fury and hatred that it would be worthy of the type of gurning that was shown in old silent movies accompanied by the captions like “No one calls me that and gets away with it. You’ll pay for that insult. I’ll get even with you if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

Mark
 

  
This exhibition of rarely seen photographs has been on display at the Bankside Museum in London and will move to Torre Abbey during the Torquay Festival starting next week to commemorate the 125th Anniversary of her birth. 

The photographs span her entire life from childhood to shortly before her death and are displayed in chronological order. The timeline is marked on the wall below esch photograph and very helpfully for the fans of her books, indicates which novels coincide with the photographs. 

Also included, in its correct place in the sequence, is the 1969 portrait of Agatha by painter Oscar Kokoshka. This, in contrast to the muted tones of the photographs, is full of vivid reds and yellows. It gives the impression of a woman very much alive and bursting with ideas even at 80. 

There are many quotations, taken largely from Agatha’s posthumously published autobiography, interspersed between the photographs which often shed more light on the woman pictured than the captions which are purely factual records of the where, when, who variety. The excerpts from her letters to second husband Max are full of joy and almost surprise at having had this second chance at love. 

The photos are black and white though there is a charming short silent film – about 2 minutes long – which is drawn from home movies of the author with husband Max Mallowan, her daughter Rosalind and grandson Matthew   These include some later colour footage. The sequences include typical family messing about in the garden material revealing a fun-loving and warm home-life completely at odds with the subject matter of her novels. There are also clips of Agatha swimming on holiday and with Max on archaeological digs in the middle east, which provided her with material for several novels. 

Easy to overlook amongst the visual display were a couple of headphones through which you could listen to Agatha talking about the experience of writer’s block. Her voice is characteristically upper middle class of the period – received pronunciation so to speak. She clearly does not take herself or her work seriously and speaks deprecatingly of the agonies she goes through before each novel and the displacement activities she tries every time before the germ of the idea comes, after which all is plain sailing. She tells how husband Max never takes seriously her moans that she fears she this time the block will be permanent and she will never write another book. “You’ve said that for 80 books and I’ve no doubt you’ll say it again next year for the 81st” 

For me the home movies and the short audio clips brought Agatha to life in a way that still photographs rarely can. However there is much to be revealed of the private Agatha from these candid snaps by friends and family. 

Overall the exhibition leaves you with the impression of a fun-loving woman who enjoyed life and her family – in spite of personal tragedies along the way (the suffering of her mother before her death, her divorce from Archie Christie, and the loss of her daughter’s husband in the second world war only shortly after they were married) – far-removed from the rather severe looking elderly author so often featured in photos of her. 

Mark

A feature of the cover design of the British Library’s Crime Classics series is the use of illustrations taken from old railway posters. This, no doubt, is tapping into a feeling of nostalgia for a bygone era when for most people travelling on holiday meant a train journey to the seaside.

Rob Davies of the British Library explained in his session at The Bodies From The Library conference in June that the adoption of this new retro look for their Crime Classics series saw a quantum leap in sales. With the series featuring John Bude novels such as The Cornish Coast Murder and The Lake District Murder, the connection between the locations and entertaining holiday reading was too good to miss so the 1920s and 1930s railway poster designs became an intrinsic part of the brand.

The evolution of such posters is intriguing in itself. Initially, when the railways first sought to encourage passenger travel they were torn between conflicting approaches – to load the posters with information about the destinations or to let the picture replace a thousand words and rely on strong images to attract attention. Gradually the latter approach prevailed with minimal text and often a strong “strapline”.  Who can forget “Skegness is so bracing”?

For a quick journey through the timeline of the evolution of railway posters go to:

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150817-vintage-tourism-posters-railways-britain

Mark

This is the first full length Miss Marple novel (earlier appearances had been in short stories).

It is easy to forget that when Agatha Christie wrote this in 1930 that it was far from being a “cozy” – a murder set in a small English village populated by apparently nice middle-class people who attend church, buy their groceries for delivery from the local shop and drink tea out of bone-china cups while gossiping about whose servants fail to polish the silver properly. Although St Mary Mead – the village in which the novel is set – has undoubtedly been the model for many such imitations that make up that sub-genre, this is a far more radical novel than its successors.

What is frequently overlooked is that it marks the entrance of one of the first female detectives to the genre in a full-length novel.

The great detectives of the Golden Age were previously (and for some time afterward remained) an almost exclusively male club. Christie already had Hercule Poirot. Dorothy L. Sayers had Lord Peter Whimsey. Margery Allingham had Albert Campion. John Dickson Carr had Dr Gideon Fell. Edmund Crispin had Professor Gervase Fen. Freeman Wills Crofts had Inspector French. Ngaio Marsh had Roderick Alleyn. G. K. Chesterton had Father Brown.

Christie, it is true, did include the female Tuppence as one half of her Tommy and Tuppence, light-hearted adventure stories but even though smarter than husband Tommy, she was not a standalone lead character in the way that the other detectives listed here were. There were also isolated examples of “Lady Detectives” from the Victorian era (indeed, one of these books has been published by the British Library as part of its Crime Classics series) but they had already sunk into obscurity by the dawn of the Golden Age.

Yet here was a woman solving the crimes and doing so by close attention to the facts, sharp observation and an understanding of human nature which, as Miss Marple herself points out, is the same the world over whether it be in a cosmopolitan city or a small village. No reliance on “female intuition” here.

In fact Miss Marple provides the role model for all the female detectives, private investigators and forensic scientists who have followed in her wake, solving crimes that baffle their male colleagues. Without Jane Marple’s trailblazing there would be no path for Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawsi, Patricia Cornwell’s Dr Kay Scarpetta, Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone or Kathy Reich’s Temperance Brennan to follow.

So tip your hats (and deerstalkers should you prefer), gentlemen, to the mould-breaking Miss Marple.

Mark